The original award—the Dr B.C.Roy award—was among the most prestigious in India and its recipients were selected after a rigorous review process under the supervision of a retired judge of the Supreme Court.
It was named after Bharat Ratna Dr Bidhan Chandra Roy, a physician-politician from West Bengal who was widely known for his landmark work on improving medical infrastructure and education. Roy was the chief minister of Bengal from 1948 to 1962.
Many doctors are now peeved at the association using the name of this award, stressing that it is “misleading and creates a false impression that the recognition is at a national level”.
“It’s a classic case of Bisleri and Bilseri- when counterfeit products try to capture the market of a well-established brand,” Federation of Resident Doctors Association (FORDA) president Dr Aviral Mathur told ThePrint. “What is even more outrageous is that it happened in the presence of Mandaviya and top functionaries from the National Medical Commission, who had not heeded the pleas to reinstate the original award.”.
ThePrint reached out to Mandaviya, but did not receive any response till the time of publication of the report.
United Doctors Front president Dr Lakshya Mittal clarified that the award given by the association is entirely different from the Dr. B.C. Roy Award conferred by the erstwhile Medical Council of India (MCI).
“We simply gave a memorial award to honour Dr. B.C. Roy, which is not a wrong thing to do,” he told ThePrint.
He said that there are numerous pressing issues the medical fraternity should be discussing, adding that it was shameful of the associations who singled out the matter and turned it into a controversy.
Incidentally, Dr Mittal with the ‘Dr BC Roy Memorial Award’ in May.
The event was supported by TAB India, an educational and medical career guidance platform. Apart from Dr Mittal, the other awardees were Dr B Srinivas, Deputy Director General (Medical Education) at the Union health ministry and secretary of the National Medical Commission (NMC); Dr Nimesh G Desai, psychiatrist and former director of IHBAS; Dr Charu Mathur, senior advocate and legal counsel to multiple medical bodies.
Instituted in 1962 by the erstwhile MCI, which was replaced by the NMC in 2019, the Dr BC Roy award was considered the highest honour bestowed upon any doctor in the country.
However, the United Doctors Front’s move to confer a similar sounding award has drawn criticism from former recipients and senior members of the medical community.
“It has always been a prestigious honour and should not be handed out so casually. No one should be allowed to use Dr BC Roy’s name so casually,” said Dr Vinay Aggarwal, who received the award in 2006.
The original award followed a well-established procedure and held immense significance within the medical fraternity. It was regarded as the highest honour for doctors, conferred by the President.
“It was our Bharat Ratna,” said Dr R.V Asokan, former head of the Indian Medical Association (IMA). “While the organisation is within its rights to institute a new award in memory of Dr B.C.Roy, I am not sure whether it would carry the same stature as the original.”
The IMA has been consistently writing to the health ministry, urging the reinstatement of the award and repeatedly raising the issue through formal meetings as well.
NMC chairman Dr B.N.Gangadhar declined to comment on the matter.
No official reason was provided for the discontinuation of the award. The only communication came in the form of a press release from India’s apex medical regulatory body, stating that it was dissociating itself from the award. This announcement was made through a letter dated 9 November, 2022, signed by Ashok Kumar, the then Deputy Secretary.
However, senior doctors with decades of experience, including members of the autonomous trust that previously finalised the list of awardees, believe the move was driven by the government’s intent to take control of the award process and “regulate the trust”.
According to Dr Ajay Sharma, a recipient of the award in 2008 and a member of the trust, the then NMC chairman, Dr Suresh Chandra Sharma, asked the trustees to resign in a meeting so that he could constitute a fresh trust under his leadership.
Initially, the Commission is said to have expressed willingness to continue overseeing the award but without relying on the old trust structure. In a meeting, the trustees even suggested that the independent body could continue under the NMC’s banner.
“We were not trustees of the erstwhile MCI, but an autonomous body of elected and selected professionals from across the country, so we could have done that,” Dr Sharma told ThePrint.
On the other hand, Dr Asokan suggested that the decision to discontinue the award was driven more by personal reasons than by any institutional incompatibility.
“It might have something to do with why the MCI was dissolved in the first place,” he said, implying that members of the former team were still involved in the trust overseeing the award.
“I think it was more of a personal decision rather than an issue of institutional incompatibility. The government seemed uncomfortable with the board that was presiding over the awards,” the IMA former head said.
The Secretary and the President of the MCI were ex-officio secretary and chairman, respectively, of this trust also known as the Dr BC Roy National Award Fund, a society registered under the Societies Registration Act.
The national award was conferred following a rigorous and multi-layered selection process. A selection committee, headed by a retired Supreme Court judge, reviewed all nominations submitted by applicants.
After thorough deliberations, the committee forwarded its recommendations to the board of trustees, who typically accepted them. The final list of awardees was then announced, and the President formally conferred the awards at a ceremony held at the Rashtrapati Bhavan.
“It was the same reasoning that led to the dissolution of the MCI—it shouldn’t remain an independent entity but go through the government channel,” said Dr Aggarwal.
(Edited by Viny Mishra)
